Tuesday, January 1, 2013

San Diego Wild Animal Farm (now Safari Park)

 

Our last day trip in our San Diego week was to a branch of the San Diego Zoo first named Wild Animal Park. The Safari name was adopted to emphasize the several kinds of activities (Safaris) which may be undertaken there (zipline rides, rope swinging, overnight camping, etc.) to generate more income. I much preferred to first version of the park which had a monorail ride around the outside of the whole park. Now there is a motorized tram just around the large African plains part.

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Birds like this water feature, including the native ones which come to visit.

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Hippo?

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Rhinoceros in the large enclosure with other herbivore animals.

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Their herd of elephants had a nice enclosure just for them. The herd ranges from babies to mature bulls and females. (What is a mature female called, a cow?) We spent a long time watching the elephants interact with one another, and then took in a show where trainers demonstrated the behaviors taught to the elephants so the trainers could look after them without getting in their enclosure.

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The bird show is a longstanding attraction of the park. Food is used to entice the desired behaviors of the birds. The largest was a beautiful secretary bird. Here one of the performing birds is in flight just to the left of the trainer.

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